The Message

by Mai Jia

  *

  The darkness gradually faded.

  The sky slowly grew light.

  Today was the last day for all of them. It was the last day for Ghost and it was the last day for everyone else too. If Ghost wasn’t exposed, the rest of the group would suffer the consequences of whatever secret instructions General Matsui had enclosed in his envelope for Colonel Hihara.

  Having realized that he too had been under suspicion all this time, Secretary Bai hadn’t slept at all well. He’d had one nightmare after another, and the sounds around him had seemed to slip easily in and out of his dreams: in one ear and out of the other. Just before dawn, he heard a sudden violent thud – brief, heavy – as if something weighty had fallen to the floor. In his semi-conscious state he thought something dreadful must have happened, and he forced himself to wake up.

  He was awake for a few minutes before he realized that what he could hear was the muffled sound of Li Ningyu moaning in agony. He thought it only too likely that the Colonel was taking out his anger on her again. He relaxed and drifted back to sleep.

  When he was woken again, in the early morning, by the warble of birdsong, the first thing he called to mind was the horrible sound of Li Ningyu in pain. He was now even more convinced that Hihara must have been beating her up again overnight.

  He immediately went to find her.

  The door to her room was ajar, and there was something about this that made him expect the worst. He didn’t dare push it fully open straight away.

  ‘Li Ningyu… Li Ningyu…’

  He called her name twice, and when there was no response he gently opened the door and put his head in. The bed was rumpled, but she wasn’t in it.

  Taking two steps into the room, he saw her lying motionless on the floor, like someone who’d been beaten so badly they couldn’t even crawl away, no matter how much they wanted to.

  He called her name again, and stepped forward, intending to try and lift her back onto the bed, but then he stopped in horror. She was dead, and it looked like it had been a truly terrible death.

  ‘There was blood all over her – her eyes, her mouth, her nose, her ears. Black blood. All over her face.’ When Secretary Bai told Hihara what he’d seen, he seemed deeply traumatized.

  ‘Blood trickling from every orifice?’ Hihara replied. ‘It sounds as though she took poison.’

  6

  Hihara was absolutely right: Li Ningyu had taken poison. Her suicide note explained that quite clearly.

  She left three suicide notes: one addressed to Commander Zhang, one for Hihara, and one for her estranged husband. The notes were written on three sheets of paper torn from a notebook, and they ran as follows:

  To the honourable Commander Zhang,

  One year ago, when I accepted the heavy responsibilities that come with being Chief of the Decryption Unit, my superiors gave me a cyanide pill. I understood that if ever any of the secrets in my possession were threatened, it would be my duty to swallow that pill without hesitation. Today I have swallowed my pill, not because those secrets are under threat but because my loyalty to the Imperial Japanese Army and to you has come under suspicion.

  Hihara has accused me – violently – of being a Communist. He treats me as a fly to be swatted or a dog to be beaten. This has been deeply painful.

  This is the only way I can show my loyalty to the country. You know me better than anyone. I have been more loyal to you than anyone, and in this desperate situation, I am ready to die for you.

  Any government official knows that danger lurks around every corner. You and I are both aware of the terrible things people can do. Hihara is blinded by his dreadful suspicions of me, and he is going to make an appalling mistake. Perhaps my death will expose his error, allowing him to distinguish between the truth and the lies. If I can achieve this by my death, then I have nothing to regret.

  But this whole situation has come about because I’ve been wrongfully accused. I am being forced to commit suicide, and I am angry that I must die this way. I can only hope that you, Commander Zhang, will clear my name.

  Your loyal subordinate,

  Li Ningyu

  Hihara,

  You have treated me like a dog, and I am sure that you will not regret my death. However, even a cornered rat can bite, and the fact remains that I am neither a dog nor a rat but a lieutenant in the Imperial Japanese Army. I am not someone that you can just trample on when you feel like it.

  You have forced me to commit suicide. I will not rest in peace. If I cannot get you in this life, I will get you in the next.

  Lieutenant Li Ningyu

  To my husband Liangming,

  I hope you can forgive me for having fallen in love with another man, and for dying without saying goodbye.

  I am dying of an infectious disease contracted while carrying out this mission. I have no regrets about dying in the performance of my official duties, but when I think about how young the children are, it’s unbearable. I have painted them a picture. I hope you will bring them up to be strong and talented young people and that they will enjoy blessings and good fortune throughout their lives.

  I will watch over you from Paradise.

  Ning

  Hihara was the first to see her suicide notes. He was on the scene immediately, prowling around, poking through her things. He read all three notes, not just the one addressed to him. After he’d read his, he did indeed feel as she’d predicted: there was nothing to regret about the death of a dog. How dare she threaten him! He ripped it to pieces. The other two notes he refolded, because it was important that he hand them over to the people for whom they were intended.

  Next, he and Police Chief Wang collected all of Li Ningyu’s possessions. These amounted to an English-style watch, a notebook issued by her work unit, a steel fountain pen with a white cap, a broken comb (missing three teeth), a leather wallet (containing the equivalent of half a month’s salary), a hair clip, a tube of lip balm, a bunch of keys, a teacup, half a box of pills, a headscarf, a set of underwear and an ink painting.

  The painting was now finished, and it depicted two trees standing strong and straight next to each other. Beneath them grew lush grass, and written to one side was the message:

  Niu’er and Xiaoyu,

  Mummy hopes that you will grow up to be like great trees and not like short grass.

  She had obviously painted it for her children.

  The painting was very simple; she’d done it all in black ink, without a speck of colour. But Hihara was worried there might be words concealed within the brushwork, so he examined it again and again: straight on, from behind, upside down, held up to the light, and through a magnifying glass.

  Every item that she’d owned was carefully checked by the two men, piece by piece, including the painting, and only when all her things had been cleared were they put to one side to be returned to her family. The one exception was her notebook; she’d already filled about half of it, so it would take at least an hour to read from start to finish, and Hihara couldn’t be bothered to look at it yet.

  He next demanded that Police Chief Wang search Li Ningyu’s corpse.

  ‘Why?’ Wang Tianxiang said crossly. ‘You can’t possibly still suspect her!’

  Even so, the two of them then searched the corpse from head to toe, inside and out. They searched her hair, her nostrils, the gaps between her teeth, her ears, and then moved on to her anus and her vagina. Everything that she had worn or could have worn was searched as well: clothes, hats and shoes. In short, they checked everywhere that could hold a scrap of paper, everywhere that a message could be written. They searched and searched: first Hihara and then Wang Tianxiang, from the left and then from the right, upwards and then downwards, and then they started again from the other side. Nothing. There was nothing on her body. There was nothing in any of her things.

  There was no message.

  No secret message anywhere.

  This was what Hihara had expected. He remembered how insist
ent Li Ningyu had been that he should search the corpse of Wu Zhiguo. If she was Ghost, she wouldn’t have tried the same thing. Besides which, Hihara had to now admit that since yesterday night, when Li Ningyu had grabbed him by the throat, he’d decided that she couldn’t possibly be Ghost. Such desperation, such rage, such hopelessness… It all went to prove that she wasn’t guilty.

  When she’d started smashing her head against the wall, Hihara had started to feel sorry for her. Or to put it another way, when Li Ningyu summoned all her strength to try and kill herself, Hihara finally believed she was innocent. The reason he’d just searched the corpse had more to do with professionalism than anything else; that and a strong conviction that it was better to be safe than sorry.

  Had the head-smashing been a ploy to make him change his mind? If so, she’d achieved her objective. Why then had she gone through with the poisoning? You didn’t need to do this, Li Ningyu, he found himself thinking. However, in the final analysis, he came back to his original starting point: there was nothing to regret about the death of a dog.

  ‘She’s dead. That’s the price she paid for her own stupidity.’ He was flicking through Li Ningyu’s notebook and trying to cheer up Wang Tianxiang, who was still looking very upset. ‘Do you know why she wanted to die?’

  ‘To prove to you that she was innocent?’ Wang Tianxiang’s answer wasn’t as naive as it sounded.

  ‘No. She was afraid of what was coming next – she didn’t want to pay for what she’d done. And of course I would have made her pay for attacking me like that. Really, what did she think she was doing? By dying like that, she’s put an end to it all. It’s over.’

  Wang Tianxiang gestured at her corpse. ‘What are we going to do about that?’

  ‘You’d better get in touch with Commander Zhang and ask him to send some people to deal with it as soon as possible. It’s nothing to do with us, after all.’ He glanced at the body, taking in the bloody face, the wounds – he could hardly bear to look at it. ‘And have someone tidy her up a bit and put her in a new uniform.’

  *

  By the time Commander Zhang arrived, Li Ningyu had been put into a brand-new uniform and post-mortem make-up had been carefully applied. This made her look rather proud, and she wore a slight smile, suggesting that she had passed away peacefully and without any regrets.

  Despite all their efforts, however, when the Commander finished reading her suicide note, there were tears in his eyes, his voice sounded choked and he looked both angry and upset. He rushed forward and took hold of the dead woman’s icy hand, bewailing her tragic demise, praising her loyalty, expressing the profoundest sorrow, speaking without the slightest restraint.

  Hihara, who was standing to one side, felt more than a little awkward. ‘You’re surely not planning to treat her like a fallen hero?’ he said.

  Commander Zhang shot him a furious glance. ‘So you think I ought to treat her like a Communist agent?’ he asked, his voice arctic.

  ‘Not necessarily.’ Hihara smiled. ‘But to honour her as a hero would be inappropriate in the circumstances.’

  ‘Then how should I respond? Please explain, Colonel Hihara.’

  ‘In her letter to her husband, didn’t she say that she was dying of an infectious disease?’

  Commander Zhang looked at the body with its broken nose and swollen face. ‘She really doesn’t look like it was a disease that killed her.’

  Hihara couldn’t be bothered to argue any more, so he turned away and said lightly, ‘Do what you like! Whatever you decide is fine by me, but you cannot treat this woman as a fallen hero.’ He was particularly concerned about this, because if she was deemed to have died a hero, his position might then become very perilous indeed.

  He invited the Commander to join him downstairs in the conference room, but the Commander seemed quite unappreciative of his hospitality, saying rather pointedly, ‘I’d prefer to stay up here with her for a bit,’ and then sitting down next to the bed on which Li Ningyu had been laid out.

  *

  The hearse arrived just before noon, and once the corpse had been taken off the premises, it was time for lunch. Hihara asked Commander Zhang to join him, but the latter politely refused.

  ‘There’s no need for all that,’ the Commander said. ‘And seeing as Ghost is still out there somewhere, you really don’t have time to have lunch with me. You’ll need to get yourself into the city by early afternoon – you have a vital operation to organize for this evening, after all.’

  Hihara cursed him silently. Who the hell did he think he was? How dare the Commander show such contempt – what a bastard! The silent cursing hadn’t made him feel any better, so he continued the cursing out loud as the car disappeared into the distance. ‘One of these days I’ll get you for this! How dare you treat me like this, when you’re nothing but a piece of scum yourself!’

  After lunch, Hihara and Police Chief Wang headed straight for where Wu Zhiguo was locked up. When Hihara thought about how he’d had cast-iron proof of Wu Zhiguo’s guilt only to be led astray by the man’s arguments and denials, he hated himself, but he hated Wu Zhiguo even more. He’d absolutely exhausted himself over this case. Now that all had been revealed, it was time for that bastard Wu Zhiguo to take the consequences. He was in for another round of terrible beatings.

  Hihara also continued to stew over how Commander Zhang had disrespected him. He became even more enraged. When he walked into Wu Zhiguo’s room, he didn’t say a word. He just grabbed a whip and beat the Chief of Staff over and over again.

  When finally his anger was spent, he started to interrogate him. It suited his mood much better to hit first and ask questions later. A way of working off his anger. He didn’t want him to confess too quickly, after all. Now that Li Ningyu was dead, which effectively made her a witness to Wu Zhiguo’s crimes, he was bound to confess. And once he’d confessed, Hihara would no longer have the chance to take out his rage on him.

  What he could not have anticipated was that, even when confronted with all the evidence against him, Wu Zhiguo would refuse to confess.

  They tortured him and he wouldn’t confess.

  They tortured him some more, and still he wouldn’t confess.

  He died protesting his innocence.

  This absolutely amazed Hihara: who would have imagined that a traitor like that could be so tough?

  Chief of Staff Wu Zhiguo was beaten to death. This proved the truth of what Gu Xiaomeng had said, that Police Chief Wang and his men enjoyed beating people to death. It was normal for them.

  7

  Wu Zhiguo had refused to admit his guilt even in the face of death. This made Hihara lose confidence in himself. He worried that Ghost might still be in the land of the living, might still be in the western building. He was completely confused; in fact, Hihara felt that he would soon be driven mad by the whole thing. He now had two corpses on his hands, and Ghost had still not been conclusively identified. He felt half-dead himself – empty, black and broken.

  Hihara would have liked to rip the hearts out of everyone around him, to find out who Ghost actually was, but he didn’t have time for that right now because the car that would take him into the city was already waiting outside. Before he left, he ordered the guards to lock the western building and to prevent anyone from entering. They were to await his return. He needed to go into Hangzhou right now to organize the arrests that would be carried out that evening at the Agate Belvedere Inn. That was the point of the last few days, after all. The whole frustrating, confusing mess had been leading up to this moment. He would arrest K, Tiger and the rest of that so-called Gathering of Heroes, and he would deal the Communist resistance a serious blow. And then he would discover who Ghost was.

  *

  The Agate Belvedere Inn was located on the slopes of Mount Fenghuang, beyond the suburbs of Hangzhou. It was a remote and very quiet spot, set amid the most beautiful landscape.

  The inn was popular with writers and artists, who congregated there of an evening
to drink and recite poetry, to gamble and fool around with whores, to discuss current affairs and hold debates. It was a place where people felt relaxed and at ease. The lights usually blazed bright and the sound of singing was often heard on the breeze.

  That evening, however, all Hihara found was a dark and silent building. In the blackness of the mountainside, it seemed a mysterious and terrifying place. It was as if the inn had only just emerged from the gloom, as if nothing had started yet.

  In fact, it was all over.

  Colonel Hihara ordered his men to light all the lamps. The vast building began to take shape in the flickering light. The cavernous rooms glowed. In one corner stood a polished mahogany bar, its rows of bottles and cabinets of glasses glimmering; in another, a cosy arrangement of low tables, plump silk cushions and elegant scroll paintings. But all was silent. The moon continued its cloudy rise above this most beautiful mountain scene, but there wasn’t a soul to be seen.

  Hihara’s men searched and searched but found nothing. There was nobody there; the entire place was empty.

  Hihara didn’t arrest anyone: not K, not Tiger, not Ghost. There was no sign of any of them, not a trace.

  What on earth was going on?

  He gazed out into the night, at the dark silhouettes of the encircling mountains. His knees began to quiver as realization dawned and blind panic set in. He had made a terrible mistake.

  TEN

  1

  This final chapter is a kind of afterword. There are some important loose ends that still need to be cleared up, not least the identity of Ghost. Also, how did Ghost’s message to the Gathering of Heroes get out? All of this has just been left hanging, unresolved.

  I will explain, trust me.

  However, first I want to say something about the story so far. How did I learn about all of this? Is it true?

  To tell you the truth, most of my earlier novels are works of pure fiction. Kafka dreamt his plots, Borges was inspired by reading philosophy – there seem to be many different approaches. What I do is collect old maps, guidebooks and local histories and then imagine what it must have been like in a particular place at a particular time. At least, that’s how I used to write my novels.